Archive for January 12th, 2009

It’s been just under half a year since we originally asked about the best netbook out there, and a lot has changed in the meanwhile. Thanks to some incessant begging from reader Chad (we kid, we kid), we’re putting this out once more for an updated look at your best option for a minuscule lappie.

“Hey guys. How about we pose the topic of best netbook once more since so many new models have arrived since the original? Much appreciated!”

So, what netbooks have impressed you over the back end of ’08? Are you still insistent that the first-generation Eee is the one to buy? Are closeout models a better option? Spill it all in comments below, then send us a question of your own at ask at engadget dawt com.

We’d heard the BlueBerry was a no-name nav unit, but the exciting world of knock-offs moves faster than a speeding bullet — and these days, it’s taking the form of a Bold. Just $164.99 buys you a phone with a QVGA display, microSD slot, and twice as many SIM slots as the real thing — oh, and about as much Exchange support as your uncle’s avocado green AT&T Slimline. We’ll take two.

Wouldn’t you know, Call of Duty: World at War was the number one most played Xbox Live game for the week of January 5th. How … special? The most played Live games list also informs us that Halo 3 holds the number two spot, Gears of War 2 is firmly planted at the number three spot and CoD4 has slipped to the number four position. Number five, you ask? It’s Left 4 Dead.

Before he was a thorn in Tina Fey’s side as the Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming at GE, Alec Baldwin was something of a sot, spending much of the ’80s in a haze of “sex, drugs, booze.” And when it came to sobering up, it wasn’t coffee that was his drug of choice. It was Galaga, though we imagine blurred vision kept him from ever putting in his initials.

Baldwin tells the New York Post that evenings of debauchery would often end in a warehouse with him playing the arcade classic into the morning. “This was the only way I could go ‘beta’ and go into that state I needed to be, where I could calm down and take my mind off everything,” recalled the actor, who confessed that God got him sober. And while the 30 Rock star oddly describes the deity as a “65-year-old retired postal worker named Lenny,” we still like to think that the Galagans played their part.

Although CES 2009 was undoubtedly smaller and perhaps a little more subdued than last year’s HDTV-dominated extravaganza, the products we did see were a lot more interesting — and of course, Palm stole the show with its blockbuster Pre announcement. We’ve rounded up the highlights below, make sure you didn’t miss anything!

Dead or Alive actress Holly Valance is trading in her sword (and vial of box office poison) for a pen a paper as journalist Brenda Snow in the recently announcedRed Alert 3: Uprising. Valance will lend her live action camp to the upcoming expansion, which is earmarked for a digital-only release this March.

The Australian-born starlet describes her role in the game as “a camp, over-dramatised character,” telling Eurogamer that “it was fun to go a little bit over the top.” We’re sure that’s quite a change from DoA‘s Christie Allen. The four people who saw that movie tell us that she was the very picture of Hollywood grace.

Now-former creative director of the Tomb Raiderfranchise at Crystal Dynamics, Eric Lindstrom, has broken his silence about recent layoffs at the developer — including his own — and rumors that the upcoming Xbox 360 exclusive DLC for the game was “held back” from the final release for profit’s sake.

Posting on the site Tomb Raider Forums, Lindstrom says that he was let go as the result of there being “too many captains for the number of ships” at the studio, suggesting that the new, leaner Crystal Dynamics won’t be working on multiple concurrent projects. Linden likened the layoffs to “musical chairs,” saying that, “when the music stopped all the seats were taken.”

Lindstrom also used his new “free agent” status to dispel rumors about the 360’s two additional, downloadable missions, which are coming soon to XBLM. “We had a production issue that was going to make us miss our ship date,” he wrote, revealing that, “It was my idea to cut what was cut, and I did hope that it would one day be made available as a download mission … but on the day we made the cut, it was made purely for Underworld production reasons.”

We’ve been hearing an awful lot about NVIDIA’s Ion platform, but up until now, we haven’t seen an awful lot. HotHardware and PC Perspective were both able to swing by NVIDIA’s booth at CES and get an up close look at the diminutive system. On hand was a half-liter PC that utilized a 1.6GHz Atom 330 CPU and NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400M GPU, and it was reportedly being used to push some pretty stellar video on the monitors behind it. Have a look past the break for a couple demonstration vids — if this is the kind of graphical prowess we can expect from nettops of tomorrow, you can color us interested.

We were told last week that Electronic Arts‘ upcoming downloadable stand alone RTS game Command and Conquer Red Alert 3: Uprising would have some new cast members for its live action cut scenes. Today Eurogamer revealed one of those new actors: Holly Valance, who plays a reporter with the almost porn-like name of Brenda Snow. The Australian-born actor is best known in the States for her recurring role in Prison Break and for playing Christie in the Dead or Alive movie (which we secretly love, by the way).

In Eurogamer’s brief interview with Valance she also revealed yet another actor that will appear in Uprising; none other than Malcolm McDowell who has perhaps made more B-grade movies than anyone alive and has been good in all of them. We won’t mention his character since it might be considered a spoiler for Red Alert 3’s storyline. Just trust us on this.

“Before the age of man, there was the dragon,fire breathing, fierce and ruthless. Long since dormant, the dragon arose hungry for modern dap knights to re-establish dragon superiority over all mankind.

“More than a control pad,,,a legend!”

<disclaimer> The previous and following (after the break!) text was copied verbatim — odd spacing and all — from the back description and product manual of the Dragon Fire Breather game controller, which we and our friends at Engadget found and bought for $1 at the CES international hall. We are not transcribing this to try to offend anyone and, yeah, we know this is probably not the manufacturers’ first language — probably not its language at all — but we are in fact very fascinated with how the translation process works.

Every chosen word does make sense, just not in the context we are used to. Plus, “mucilanginous” is a very funny word, and if you look carefully, you’ll notice World of Warcraft’s title screen art.The official US name is “USB Dragon Dual Shock Scary Gamepad” (with 12-button and 2 analog sticks) and is available from DealExtreme for $27.37. It also comes in ninja and pirate variants. </end disclaimer>